The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, director, and teacher gives
you a blunt, irreverent, unsparingly honest guide to acting that
overturns conventional truths and tells you what they
really need to know. David Mamet advises aspiring actors on
topics such as judging a role, approaching the part, working with the
playwright, undertaking auditions, and the relationship with agents
and the business in general.

True and False: Heresy
and Common Sense for the Actor is provocative and inspirational
book on the job, craft, art, and life of the actor. Provides a
devil's advocate's point of view of the whole issue of theatre
training for actors. David Mamet is unmistakably clear about
why he thinks actors should not be taken in by such highly touted
notions as "the arc" of the character or the play,
"substitution," "sense-memory," the Method itself
— in fact, by most of what is being taught in acting schools and
workshops across the country today.

David Mamet slaughters some of the profession's most sacred
cows and leaves no acting tenet untouched: How to judge the role,
approach the part, work with the playwright. How to concentrate and
think about the scene. How to avoid becoming the Paint-by-Numbers
Mechanical Actor, the "How'm I Doing?" Ham Actor, the
over-the-top "Hollywood Huff" Actor. The right way to
undertake auditions and rehearsals. The proper approach to agents, to
individual jobs, and to the business in general. The question of
talent.

True and False is bold, witty, and as controversial as the
author's plays.

What people say:

"Mamet manages to demolish the
myths ... that pass for theory with regard o acting and directing ...
True and False is a revealing book of the
highest order and a pleasure to read." — Anthony
Hopkins

"This book should be read and
considered by everyone who acts." — Steve
Martin

"True and False
is vigorously aggressive and laddishly unsubtle. It sets its sights
on what Mamet dislikes and despises — theatre academics, drama
teachers, pretentious directors - and then blazes away." —
The Independent

"Trenchant ... meet's
pared-down, occasionally cryptic prose can make powerful sense."
— The New York Times

About the Author:

David Mamet is a Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter
as well as a director, novelist, poet, and essayist. He has written
the screenplays for more than twenty films, including the
Oscar-nominated The Verdict. His more than twenty plays
include the Pulitzer Prizewinning Glengarry Glen Ross. His
other awards include a Tony Award, an Academy Award, two OBIE Awards,
two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, and Outer Circle, Society of West End Theatre, and
Dramatists Guild Hall-Warriner Awards.